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Could Jesus Have Sinned? 71Thus the Son chose to experience the world through the limitationsimposed by human consciousness and an authentic human nature.The attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnisciencewere not lost or laid aside, but became latent and potential withinthe confines of his human nature. They were present in Jesus in alltheir fullness, but they were no longer in conscious exercise. Theincarnation thus means that Jesus “actually thought and acted,viewed the world, and experienced time and space events strictlywithin the confines of a normally developing human person.” 2Look again at the various accounts of Jesus’s temptation bySatan. We are told that he not only was led into the wilderness bythe Spirit (Matt. 4:1) but also was being led by the Spirit in thewilderness during the entire course of the forty days (Luke 4:1; itwas, no doubt, the Spirit who led Jesus to fast).If he was being tempted by Satan for forty days (Mark 1:13), hewas being led by the Spirit for those same forty days (Luke 4:1).It is impossible to escape the conclusion that these Gospel writerswant their readers to understand that Jesus met and conqueredthe usurping enemy of God not by his own power alone but wasaided in his victory by the power of the Holy Spirit. 3He was fortified and energized by the continual infusion of divinepower from the Spirit of God (see also John 3:34).Someone might ask, But why or how did the human Jesus alwayschoose to rely on the power of the Spirit and thereby notsin? The answer would be that the Spirit was always antecedentto any choice that Jesus was to make, enabling and energizinghim to continue in his conscious reliance on the power the Spiritwas providing. Is that not also the case with us? To whatever degreeand however frequently we choose not to sin, it is because theSpirit antecedently empowered us to choose to avail ourselves ofhis presence and supply.It could conceivably be said, therefore, that Jesus was peccablewhen it came to the metaphysical potential for sin in his own2Ibid., 210.3Ibid., 139.